Arran

time after time

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Goatfell summit: Kay and A

The sun beat down on Goatfell and everything distant was obscured by heat haze; the Rebolg’s tongues hung out thirstily and they eyed the huge granite blocks without enthusiasm: this was no fun, never a woolly thing to chase (a massive relief to the humans).

We had all – Kay, A (her partner), their doberpeople (Rebel and Olga, aka the Rebolg), Cee and Em - met in Arran, joined later by Maude and her Porsche and big tin of biscuits; we were staying in Lochranza; but Arran is small enough to get easily to any bit of it, and this day we had nipped across to Brodick to sew up the highest point, just short of Munro height, but you start from sea level, so it’s far more worthy than the A9 horizontal slagheap Munros.

This is the thing about hills: mere summit height above sea level tells you little of interest; the height from starting point is what matters, and so is angle, type of rock, view, even remoteness. When you open your box of chocolates is your first choice a choc whose summit measures over x mm from base? I think not. If Mr Munro had shredded his list down the toilet, everyone would have had a lot more enjoyment – apart from compulsive list-collectors. Only a personal opinion.

ascent by push chair

Anyway, here we were in Arran, where I’d been several times, first as an infant in the ‘30s, when we crossed to Brodick (in the Waverley paddle steamer, whose career ended in WWII during the Dunkirk episode) and stayed there several years for a month in the summer. Dad, an inveterate hillwalker, pushed me in a wheelchair halfway up Goatfell, while Joan, a couple of years older, walked; perhaps this is why Joan was never a keen hillwalker while I became an addict.

Much later, when we were both at university, Joan and I spent a week there in a hotel, where the food, in those days of rationing, was unbelievable – real eggs, heaps of bacon, actual whipped cream, gosh! (years after, Joan could still remember every meal we had in that hotel). The last day, I felt a need to do Goatfell, and an equal need to be in time for every bit of food; going at top speed all the way to the summit and running all the way back, slithering and sliding on the peat, I reached the lunch table, just in time, covered in perspiration and peat.

decadence

Later still, Allen and I took our tents past the notice that told us to BEWARE OF THE BULL, up Glen Rosa and spent a weekend enjoying the decadent new comfort of airbeds, being wary of the unseen bull and sewing up Caliban’s Creep, an amusing wee route on the Rosa Pinnacle of Cir Mhòr.

And now, some 60 years since I’d first been there as an infant, I was back on Goatfell, longing to be an infant in a pushchair again, because the sun was fierce and my companions, Kay, A and the dobers, were all bounding upwards as though gravity had been halved, while advancing years dragged me back like a massive block of concrete. Somewhere down below, at sea level, Cee and Em were touring the shore road on their bikes, good choice in this heat.

granite ridges

Fine as it was to be back among those high granite ridges, the best place during the heat of the day was in the pools and waterfalls of a stream a few miles from Lochranza. In the evenings, towards sunset, it was a pleasant stroll in the cool of the evening up the track to Loch na Davie, or up the hill between Lochranza and Sannox, to watch the sun go down over the Paps of Jura over thirty miles away.

evening stroll

Back down at the cottage, the sunset-induced communal peace was shattered by a scream from Maude, who had opened her tin of biscuits and found it almost empty, raided by the Hunter-Gatherers.  It seems that girls – natural predatory survivors – will scoff any available fodder, while boys wait to be offered. My offspring were all girls, Maude’s all boys, and we fell to discussing this interesting gender difference, though I had a sneaking suspicion that my girls might have learnt to be predators because of their upbringing. (A generation onwards I notice that Kay’s three boys do not raid my chocolate hoard, but who knows whether this is due to their gender or their upbringing?)

distant Jura

No big achievements, but no frights either - apart from the biscuits - just a good holiday before the stressful upheaval that now shimmered in the pipeline – the move from Orkney to Aberdeenshire.

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